Greenpeace activists at HP Headquarters in Bangalore demand the company to lobby for e-waste legislation in India.
Greenpeace insists that the brand has to have a nation wide
operational takeback service for all consumers, not just for its
business consumers, to reflect its commitment to lobby for
legislation based on Individual Producer Responsibility (IPR)
(1).
"Why does it take HP so much time to start a pan-India takeback
service for all its customers, given that it had now had two years'
of experiment and learning?" asked Abhishek Pratap, Greenpeace
toxics campaigner? Is it because the company does not want e-waste
legislation embracing IPR in India?"
HP is the leading computer hardware brand in Indian market with
a 21 % market share (2). The brand also leads in the Notebook
market with a 37 % market share. However, the company's
responsibility towards the environment has not grown with its
growing market share- at least not to date in India. A recent
Greenpeace study (3) found that the brand's efforts on making
available a takeack service for end-of-the-life products in India
are grossly inadequate.
HP's takeback service in India covers only its corporate, big
institutional customers, leaving a vast number of individual users
without the service. As per the 'takeback blues' study, even its
corporate customer takeback service is not working properly. HP in
India says that the brand will start a takeback service for
individual customers, but only after it learns from the ongoing
recycling process and system experiments, going on for past two
years. What the company does not explain is why HP is not able to
formulate a robust takeback service for all its customers even as
the company offers takeback service for all its customers in
Europe, US and other developed nations.
The brand (globally) supports the principle IPR, and even
actively lobbies in Europe and the US for IPR legislation, but not
so in India. The position of the brand on support and lobby for
legislation in India is not clear as the company has so far shied
away from making any commitment publicly.
"It is imperative that HP, being the market leader in the
computer segment in India leads the pack by calling for legislation
and by lobbying within the electronics sector and the government to
make e-waste legislation in India a reality," said Abhishek
Pratap. "The brand must, without further delay, start voluntary,
free takeback service for all its customers"
Takeback services which attribute the costs of recycling to each
individual producer will encourage producers to phase out the use
of toxic substances in their products at the design stage, thus
allowing for safer recycling and reduced end of life costs for the
companies. Greenpeace is demanding that all electronics producers
take full responsibility for their own-branded e-waste on a global
level, by ensuring that it is properly recycled or disposed of.
For further information, please visit designouttoxics.org
For further information, contact
Ramapati Kumar, Greenpeace Toxics Campaigner +91 98455 35414
Abhishek Pratap, Greenpeace Toxics Campaigner +91 98456 10749
Saumya Tripathy, Greenpeace Communications +91 93438 62212
Notes to Editor
1. Individual Producer Responsibility is a refinement of the principle of Extended Producer Responsibility, which is a policy tool to make producers individually responsible for the entire lifecycle of products - production, usage and finally disposal. EPR works best when it makes full use of both the ingredients of the precautionary principle such as designing-out- toxics and the polluter pay principle such as internalization of full end-of- life costs. EPR also means adopting the same operating standards regardless of location.
2. IDC report “India Quarterly PC Tracker, 4Q 2007, February 2008 release”
3. Greenpeace Indian release report “TakeBack Blues – An assessment of e-waste takeback by brands in India” on August 4, 2008 in New Delhi. The full report can be downloaded from www.designouttoxics.org